Motivational Quotes

Ideas

Ideas are, in truth, force.

- James, Henry

Best Quotes about Ideas

It's easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out-of-date.

Oech, Roger Von

Ideas won't work unless you do.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wander whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

If you want to get across an idea, wrap it up in a person.

Bunche, Ralph

Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.

Eliot, George

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.

Trotsky, Leon

10.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

11.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

Walter Bagehot

12.

There is no adequate defense, except stupidity, against the impact of a new idea.

Bridgman, P. W.

13.

Good ideas and innovations must be driven into existence by courageous patience.

Rickover, Hyman G.

14.

Take the obvious, add a cupful of brains, a generous pinch of imagination, a bucketful of courage and daring, stir well and bring to a boil.

Baruch, Bernard M.

15.

You have to hatch ideas -- and then hitch them.

Everson, Ray D.

16.

An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.

Frost, Robert

17.

The ideas dictate everything, you have to be true to that or you're dead.

Lynch, David

18.

Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.

Hugo, Victor

19.

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you only have one.

Chartier, Alain

20.

Many ideas are good for a limited time -- not forever.

Townsend, Robert

21.

The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.

William O. Douglas

22.

No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit.

Sir Frederick G. Banting

23.

A great idea is usually original to more than one discoverer. Great ideas come when the world needs them. Great ideas surround the world's ignorance and press for admission.

Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart

24.

We are not to make the ideas of contentment and aspiration quarrel, for God made them fast friends. A man may aspire, and yet be quite content until it is time to raise; and both flying and resting are but parts of one contentment. The very fruit of the gospel is aspiration. It is to the heart what spring is to the earth, making every root, and bud, and bough desire to be more. -

Beecher, Henry Ward

25.

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.

John Cage

26.

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

Victor Hugo

27.

A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.

James, William

28.

Think for thyself one good idea, but known to be thine own, is better than a thousand gleaned from fields by others sown.

Wilson, Alexander

29.

A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.

Maritain, Jacques

30.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

31.

The idea is in my head to put it down is nothing.

Avery, Milton

32.

Ideas lose themselves as quickly as quail, and one must wing them the minute they rise out of the grass, or they are gone.

Kennedy, Thomas F.

33.

So many new ideas are at first strange and horrible, though ultimately valuable that a very heavy responsibility rests upon those who would prevent their dissemination.

J. B. S. Haldane

34.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

35.

The ideas of a time are like the clothes of a season: they are as arbitrary, as much imposed by some superior will which is seldom explicit. They are utilitarian and political, the instruments of smooth-running government.

Lewis, Wyndham

36.

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

Marquis, Don

37.

The world moves, and ideas that were good once are not always good.

38.

But how shall I get ideas? Keep your wits open! Observe! Observe! Study! Study! But above all, Think! Think! And when a noble image is indelibly impressed upon the mind -- Act!

Marden, Orison Swett

39.

People find ideas a bore because they do not distinguish between live ones and stuffed ones on a shelf.

Pound, Ezra

40.

Whenever I hear people talking about liberal ideas, I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive. The proper place for liberality is in the realm of the emotions.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

41.

Mere words are cheap and plenty enough, but ideas that rouse and set multitudes thinking come as gold for the mines.

Penny, A. Owen

42.

There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than politicians think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas... that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.

Foucault, Michel

43.

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.

Hugo, Victor

44.

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.

Hector Berlioz

45.

I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

Georgia O'Keeffe

46.

A new idea is like a child. It's easier to conceive than to deliver.

Koysis, Ted

47.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

48.

If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.

Mann, Thomas

49.

A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind.